The Scientific American podcast features Justin Siegel from UC Davis. He's leading the research team, and is another product of the Baker Lab. He was a lead author of "Increased Diels-Alderase activity through FoldIt player guided backbone remodeling", Nature Biotechnology 2012: 30: 190-192 DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2109. (That paper also cited "Foldit players", or at least "Players F", as an author, along with Drs. Cooper, Baker, and Popovich.)

The Aggie is published by the Associated Students at the UC Davis (ASUCD). According to the UC Davis' website, they are ranked #1 nationally in agriculture and #1 worldwide in veterinary medicine. So the aflatoxin challenge seems like a good fit.

This one has nothing to do with foldit, but suggests an answer to a question I've heard asked in chat: Why does the fungus make the aflatoxin?

"...Aflatoxin production increased an average of 1.5-fold in the presence of a single [insect] larva and nearly 3-fold when the fungus was mechanically damaged.... Our results provide the first clear evidence of a fitness advantage conferred to A. flavus by aflatoxin when interacting with insects."

Edited to add: What astonishes me here is that the fungus doesn't just produce aflatoxin to make life harder for bugs that might come along and eat it. It produces *more* aflatoxin when it is being eaten than when it isn't.

Wondered when it would run eventually! Part of my streaming goals is to help get the playerbase of my demographic and similar ones growing within Foldit, so that there's more incentive to keep improving the game and adapting towards the future players, not just the seasoned vets. I realize I might be pandering to the wrong crowd here with public radio, but any favorable notoriety's good news for me, and I happen to only listen to public radio whenever I commute, so it's even more of a cool opportunity for me than on the surface!

This annual conference brings together 600 of the world's brightest young researchers and about 30 Nobel Laureates. This year's conference focused on physiology and medicine, and crowdsourcing and video games were hot topics. Several members of the Foldit Aflatoxin scientific team were there to present the project and introduce people to foldit: